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Life without Arsenal

I’ve been sans phone for a week. Phoneless. Without my sleek, metallic, personality-bereft friend. No bulky weight in my pocket ( easy ladies! ) to remind me of the exciting potential & window of wonder that is my mobile. It has been ridiculously tough. Why? I hear you cry in your sarcastic, I really-don’t-care, tone. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a 20-a-day smoker. I used to be 6″4 before I started ( Zing! ), but seriously, I do enjoy a cigarette. I’ve found though, that the nicotine hit that is supplied by these small, pencil-sized cancer bringers is supplemented by my phone. Hold your equine-based creatures for an iota. Not for a second am I suggesting that phones are the harbingers of death, oh no, we let The Big Guy decide all that stuff. No, what I was trying to say, is that the feeling that is supplied by the cigarette & it’s combo of noxious chemicals is aided, boosted, by my phone in my hand.

Whilst smoking, I am plugged into the Twitter matrix. Fuck Facebook & it’s horde of English-bastardizing, baby-pic posting, motivational quoting nincompoops. No, Twitter is my gateway to like-minded individuals who I not only enjoy conversing with, but also rather like to read their opinions, blinkered or not. It also massages my competitive side. Massages is not the right word, no it flexes my shoulder muscles like an over-zealous corner man in a boxing match, shoving my imaginary gumshield in my bloodied gob, points it’s ethereal finger at my face & implores me to go out there, pluck a tweet from my haphazardly filed mind & go & get some RT’s & Faves.

Yes, I’m that sad. I crave reassurance. Maybe it was my upbringing in the circus, pining for applause as I put my head on the line night after night as a plinth for the apple that would be repeatedly shot at by a blindfolded midget in lederhosen. I believe my tangent has taken me wildly off course.

My phone offers comfort, it offers potential. It is the bringer of opportunity. Whilst I puff on my cancer-stick, I’m scrolling through tweets, I’m reading blogs, I’m looking at Vines of cats ( Kitty-Kats mind you ), it is a wealth of information. It is the font where I dip my head to get baptised by information & fact.
Whilst I smoked without my phone, the cigarette coldly offered a disinterested hug. What about my laptop? I sat outside, in the rain, considering the risks & thought better of ruining an expensive laptop just so I could check if someone had replied to a query on Twitter. However, like a junkie chasing crack, I would stoop low. My mother has an ipad, I could use this! I appropriated the tablet for my own nefarious needs. No longer would you be needed to search for price comparison on Cillit Bang! No more research on spa breaks! No, you shall be my sidekick on my Twitter quest!
It was a fair substitute. The format for twitter on ipad though, is slightly different to my phone & I don’t like fucking change. Like an ill-fitting jumper bought for you by a distant relative, It just wasn’t right. It would have to suffice though, for my time without my pocket buddy was still long & arduous.
As I sat on the porcelain throne this morning, after reading the ingredients on the shampoo bottle for the umpteenth time, a rare & illuminating idea came to me. My week without my phone has been horrible, a spoilt 21st century child, ignorant of the current plight of the rest of the world, lamenting his missing phone whilst children all throughout the globe didn’t have food. I disgusted myself. 1st world problems indeed. What if we were devoid of other amenities, other things that to other people were not necessary, but to us, they were as vital as limbs? What if we were without Arsenal?

I’m looking at it from a standalone viewpoint that we all share. Fanatical Gooner. I know it sends chills throughout your body but imagine now a life without football. I could say just without our beloved Club but if Arsenal never existed then our love for football would simply see us support another team. Never spurs though. If we were without football, Life would be June-August permanently.

Scores of meandering fans in shopping centres, dragged by their better halves to changing rooms to offer their paltry, half-arsed opinions on maxi-dresses, open-toed sandals & slingbacks, whatever the fuck they are. Fans wandering the shop floor for a place to perch & pluck their phone from their pockets, playing whatever new game there is that blots out the miserable existence of weekends. A fan sees another fan across the dunes of blouses. They say the eyes are windows to the soul, well both mens’ eyes send out a bleating message of melancholy. Fans nomadically walking around B&Q looking at what potted plants could liven up the back patio, but not really giving a fuck either way. Scores of fans in coffee shops, or sitting indoors, trying to care about golf or tennis. No fervent nature, no blind-eyed support. Just looking ahead to the working week & looking forward to the respite.

Weekends without a point. Ploughing your thoughts & cash into some time-wasting efforts or hobbies that might pique your interest somewhat, but in your subconscious you know full well that nothing will grab you by the funspot & simply engulf you. Nothing. So it’s back to efforts in procrastination. Twitter would be a fucking wasteland of food-photos & vitriiol.
This isn’t a dating blog, but my other hobbies include Playstation, movies & eating copious amounts of meat ( Ha! ). So I’d be the character in South Park in the World of Warcraft episode, all my self poured into a cyber-dream version of myself that is the complete opposite of what I would be. World conqueror in my head, morbidly-obese, half-dead, balding, cooking in my own bodily-juices, in real life.

Since the epic triumph in the Cup, I’ve been like a street urchin, feasting on the raggedy bones & burger wrappers that is the League Play-offs & any foreign football I can find. Thank heavens for Sky & my laptop. Now most of that has reached it’s nadir, the WC is on the horizon. Exciting stuff but I yearn for Arsenal.
It’s still hugely exciting for us Gooners though, despite what the nay-sayers & doom-mongerers cry. Arsene will reinforce this summer. We are on the up. Cue the speculation & lies, bring on the smoke & indeed mirrors, herald the untold stories of players currently at Heathrow Costa Coffee, wearing Arsenal Polo shirts, consuming biscotti with their lattes. This is the stuff that, despite the fact I, along with the majority, abhor the transfer talk, it still gives me sustenance, a source of Arsenal. Whilst we know that Edinson Cavani, Reus & Balotelli are not currently at Colney having the craic with Vik Akers, The contentment I get from seeing like-minded Gooners share my thoughts & opinions lambasting the tripe-flingers is good enough to last me until The Emirates Cup, which I shall be attending. A man cannot live on bread alone, but I’d rather have a bread-only diet than be a coprophiliac. Seems sound logic to me. Time to read some more fabrication. I’m hungry.